The Future of Fuel Efficiency

In some ways, the arrival of the car around 130 years ago represented a dumbing down of transportation. I'm not saying those early cars weren't impressive engineering feats; they were, and continue to be. But your average horse possesses a certain intelligence that your average horseless carriage lacks (and that's before we get to Mr. Ed). But the seeds of change were sown in Silicon Valley, and decades of Moore's Law has worked its magic to bring us to the current day. Ultimately, the future of more fuel efficient cars is going to be a future of more intelligent cars—everything from autonomous vehicles to engines that navigate traffic better than we do.

Hybrid hype or hope?

Ars on the future of cars

In parts one and two of this series, we looked at innovations in the internal combustion engine and efficiency-minded tech. In this final installment, we'll examine other developments aiming to eke out more miles from a tank of gas.
Combining internal combustion engines with electric motors might be all the rage now, but the idea goes back further than you might think. Back at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) created the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid. It used batteries and a Daimler engine to power electric motors mounted in each wheel hub. This arrangement, known as a series hybrid, uses the engine to run a generator, which in turn powers the electric motors and/or charges the car's batteries.

There are some theoretical advantages to a series hybrid. As discussed in part one, traditional car engines need to operate under a range of conditions. This involves design compromises like making less power higher up the rev range in order to get acceptable performance at lower revs. But if that engine's job is just to run a generator, then it can be designed without these trade-offs and run closer to its peak efficiency. Electric motors also make lots of torque near instantly, so you don't need complex mechanical transmissions that bring parasitic losses with them.

The Lohner Porsche Semper Vivus Replica at the Geneva Motor Show 2011.

Series hybrids first caught on in trains and ships. When hybrid cars reappeared in showrooms nearly 100 years after Ferdinand Porsche's however, they used a different hybrid design philosophy—the parallel hybrid. In a parallel hybrid, the electric motor and the gas engine are both connected to the transmission. Toyota was first to market with a modern hybrid passenger car in 1997, when the first generation Prius went on sale in Japan. We had to wait another two years for hybridization to reach this side of the Pacific though. Honda, not Toyota, was first with their highly aerodynamic Insight. You may even be surprised to find out we reviewed the Insight at Ars way back then. Its unfamiliar looks drew crowds and prompted Will Ryu to tell people he was visiting from the future (you should check out that review even if it's just to see how far the site's design has evolved since).

Two years later, hybrid drivetrains were being packed into more normal looking cars, like the Honda Civic. We tested that out, too, and now a decade later you can buy hybrid versions of quite a few "normal" cars and SUVs. Despite the expanding market, it's fair to say that Toyota's Prius has built up the most hybrid mindshare, something economist Steve Sexton attributes to its distinctive looks (and thus its ability to signal to others that it belongs to someone who cares about the environment).

Hybrid drivetrains help make cars more fuel efficient in a number of ways. For starters, having an electric motor onboard to provide extra power means the car can get away with a smaller, less powerful internal combustion engine. And because electric motors are good at providing torque right away, that engine doesn't require the kinds of design compromises otherwise necessary to ensure good performance at lower engine speeds. In fact, the Prius and other hybrids are designed to only use electric power at low speed, so drivers should see the same kind of efficiency boost in traffic that start-stop technology delivers.

Hybrids are also able to recover energy normal cars throw away because an electric motor is really the same thing as an electric generator, except in reverse. The kinetic energy that would otherwise be lost by applying the brakes instead gets converted back into electrical energy for recharging the batteries. Regenerative braking recently made the leap from the road to the racetrack, thanks to its adoption by Formula 1 (there it goes by the acronym KERS, or Kinetic Energy Recovery System). While I'm the first person to point out there's actually very little technology transfer from F1 to road cars, in this instance there's a case to be made. For one thing, F1 gives a halo effect to regenerative braking. Alex Bellus, an automotive analyst at IHS, recently discussed this idea with Ars:

For enthusiasts like you and I, I think hybrid technology has a ways to go before we'll be accepting of it. Regenerative braking is perfectly fine in normal, day-to-day driving but completely dilutes any finesse a skilled driver might try to use when braking during a spirited run. On the other hand, as more performance car manufacturers embrace systems like KERS used in F1, there's a real possibility that even enthusiasts could not only put up with it, but actually embrace hybrid drivetrains as the technology improves.

Proving his point, Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, and Jaguar all have hybrid supercars set to hit the streets in the next few years. They come with stratospheric price tags—around $1 million each. A Venn diagram of "people who spend $1 million on a car" and "people who want to get great gas mileage" probably has a very small intersection. But even if their owners don't care about good fuel consumption, governments across the world are starting take the concept quite seriously. Europe has set a fleet CO2emissions target of just 95 g/km by 2020 (this works out to 57.4 US mpg). These car companies don't want to see their 200 mph monsters legislated out of existence, and hybridizing lets them have their cake and eat it too. McLaren has yet to release a figure for its forthcoming P1, neither has Ferrari for its hybrid Enzo replacement. However, Jaguar's C-X75 promises less than 99 g/km (55 mpg) and Porsche's 918 will come with a combined 795 hp while emitting a scarcely believable 70 g/km, or 78 mpg! Socially acceptable supercars—who'd have thought it possible?

While most of the other things are really good to work towards, personally, I really don't want a car that drives itself. I don't drive because I have to, and I don't drive only because I need to, I drive because I LOVE driving. I had the option, when I was visiting family in the DC area, to fly, or to drive for 9 hours to get there, and even if the cost to drive would have been comparable (round trip flight was more than double the cost of gas), I would have still drove (driven?). Nothing like going through an area like the middle of nowhere West Virginia, with nobody else on the road, driving through miles of forest, with no stress and having no reason to be in a hurry. Yeah, you could do that with a self driving car, but if you're not driving, it's not really the same thing. Maybe this will be one of those things where kids born after this whole thing starts will wonder why people didn't always ride in self driving cars, but I have no desire to give up the ability to drive myself.

Now, that being said, I couldn't care less whether it's an electric car, a gasoline car, or a hydrogen car. The technology makes no difference to me, but I'd rather be in control of my own destiny than the programmer of the computer for the car and the guidance system.

Now, that being said, I couldn't care less whether it's an electric car, a gasoline car, or a hydrogen car. The technology makes no difference to me, but I'd rather be in control of my own destiny than the programmer of the computer for the car and the guidance system.

I'm sure there are a number of people like you, that enjoy driving. Personally though I would much rather trust the computer. Driving can be something fun but most of the time it's just a method of transportation. Since mass transit is essentially non-existent here (I don't live in a large city), I'm suck with having to drive.

One fundamental problem with self-driving cars is what to do when the automatic algorithms determine that have to hand control back to the driver. In an aircraft, the pilots are relatively engaged no matter what, and there tends to be at least some reasonable time to react.Even so, there have been some memorable accidents where the automatics handed the pilot an impossible situation. There was a regional aircraft (an ATR if I remember) that slowly iced up; the autopilot corrected, and when it ran out of rudder movement it handed the stick to the pilots. There wasn't much they could do at that point, and it ended badly.On a similar note, the recent tragic Air France crash on the Brazil/Europe route saw pilots being handed control back from the automatics, but unable to understand what was wrong, and unable to handle the situation. That, too, ended badly.

Consider a car that's in auto mode, trailing the car in front by a few meters at 100kp/h, with another car behind it. Here, we are in a mode that's well beyond human reactions to handle, in fact this state of affairs is one of the reasons for having the auto mode in the first place.Now something happens and auto mode disengages. If it does so suddenly, a quite ugly accident is very likely, since regardless of driver attention or engagement, the situation simply cannot be handled. The ensuing litigation will also be memorable.

So one of the most important aspects of self-driving car algorithms is to provide a gradual, coordinated (with other traffic, and with the driver) handover back to the human if the automatics determine they have to let go. That is going to be hard, and require multiply-fault-tolerant links and components all the way. Such tend to be very expensive.

Also consider the maintenance and quality-assurance regime that aircraft, airlines, maintenance shops and pilots operate under. These all contribute to an outstanding safety record. It is foolish to assume that the same kinds of benefits can be reaped from self-driving cars without some of the associated cost - do you currently trust your local car mechanic to be as quality-conscious as the aircraft guy? And would you pay as much for car maintenance as for aircraft maintenance?

Being non-technical, I suspect these factors will be harder to solve than the purely technical ones. Time will show - it's certainly possible to create a self-driving, traffic-efficient car system; but at what cost and timescale?

One fundamental problem with self-driving cars is what to do when the automatic algorithms determine that have to hand control back to the driver. In an aircraft, the pilots are relatively engaged no matter what, and there tends to be at least some reasonable time to react.Even so, there have been some memorable accidents where the automatics handed the pilot an impossible situation. There was a regional aircraft (an ATR if I remember) that slowly iced up; the autopilot corrected, and when it ran out of rudder movement it handed the stick to the pilots. There wasn't much they could do at that point, and it ended badly.On a similar note, the recent tragic Air France crash on the Brazil/Europe route saw pilots being handed control back from the automatics, but unable to understand what was wrong, and unable to handle the situation. That, too, ended badly.

Consider a car that's in auto mode, trailing the car in front by a few meters at 100kp/h, with another car behind it. Here, we are in a mode that's well beyond human reactions to handle, in fact this state of affairs is one of the reasons for having the auto mode in the first place.Now something happens and auto mode disengages. If it does so suddenly, a quite ugly accident is very likely, since regardless of driver attention or engagement, the situation simply cannot be handled. The ensuing litigation will also be memorable.

So one of the most important aspects of self-driving car algorithms is to provide a gradual, coordinated (with other traffic, and with the driver) handover back to the human if the automatics determine they have to let go. That is going to be hard, and require multiply-fault-tolerant links and components all the way. Such tend to be very expensive.

Also consider the maintenance and quality-assurance regime that aircraft, airlines, maintenance shops and pilots operate under. These all contribute to an outstanding safety record. It is foolish to assume that the same kinds of benefits can be reaped from self-driving cars without some of the associated cost - do you currently trust your local car mechanic to be as quality-conscious as the aircraft guy? And would you pay as much for car maintenance as for aircraft maintenance?

Being non-technical, I suspect these factors will be harder to solve than the purely technical ones. Time will show - it's certainly possible to create a self-driving, traffic-efficient car system; but at what cost and timescale?

The gap between humans and computers is significant, but I think the ideal solution is to make sure the car keeps itself in a situation the human driver can handle.

As for mechanics, my thinking is automatic driving cars should be strictly rental so only qualified personal maintain them.

Back at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) created the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid. It used batteries and a Daimler engine to power electric motors mounted in each wheel hub

Fun fact: this drive was actually put into use for tanks during WWII. The "Elefant" heavy tank destroyer built by Porche for the Nazi army used two engines to drive a generator that powered electrical motors placed in the track's power wheels. This was an attempt to work around a typical problem in tanks at the time: unreliable and hard gear boxes and transmission (and when I mean hard, I mean some Russian tankers where issued hammers to be able to shift the gears of their tanks).

The gap between humans and computers is significant, but I think the ideal solution is to make sure the car keeps itself in a situation the human driver can handle.

As for mechanics, my thinking is automatic driving cars should be strictly rental so only qualified personal maintain them.

But stuffing cars inhumanly close together is one of the key points of auto driving... since it will provide higher utilization of roads, lower fuel consumption, etc. Not that it's a necessary consequence of auto mode, but proponents do push it as a good reason for it.

Shifting ownership models to rental is an interesting ideas. And I guess the days of fixing your own car are over, anyway.

But how many times are you making those kinds of trips? Those are rare. You'll spend most of the time in hour-long commutes through the cities at a snail's pace with a bunch of idiots who - as the article states - never should've gotten a license.

If you want a non-self driving car for that trip, rent one. I'm sure the market will provide them - hopefully with some kind of beacon warning all the self-driving cars that there's an actual human being behind the wheel.

They can't get here fast enough. I for one would love to spend my commute doing more useful stuff.

A sure sign of wealth is a personal chauffeur who drives you anywhere without you having to care about anyone else's destination - so perhaps people'll buy it when it's marketed like that.

flunk wrote:

Self-driving cars are pointless. Why even have a car if you're not going to drive it?

That makes it even better, because now you can rent a cab without having to pay a human being to take you somewhere. If I'm done with my commute, feel free to use it for your next trip.

Quote:

Why not just improve public transit?

Because GM and Ford are not in that business, cities are. It's also not an either-or scenario.

Quote:

It would be more efficient and there is no practical difference if you're not driving the car.

There's a big difference; the trip takes longer and it's slower in virtually every case.

Even so, there have been some memorable accidents where the automatics handed the pilot an impossible situation. (...)On a similar note, the recent tragic Air France crash on the Brazil/Europe route saw pilots being handed control back from the automatics, but unable to understand what was wrong, and unable to handle the situation. That, too, ended badly.

AF447 is not the best example of that.The pilots were faced with inconsistent airspeed measurements, got a number of warnings and got confused.Had they been flying the plane manually at the time, they could have still been confused by it.

A better example would be China Airlines 006.One of the engines stopped causing it to drag the plane, for which the auto-pilot compensated.When the captain disengaged the auto-pilot, he did not compensate properly and let the plane slide into an uncontrolled dive.That said, such event would not have occurred in a plane with flight envelope protection, like a modern Airbus or the latest Boeings.

But in general, there's clearly an issue with the interaction between humans and computers.The problem isn't as much that the computers hand humans "impossible" situations, it's just that the humans get confused by the computers' behavior.

Also consider the maintenance and quality-assurance regime that aircraft, airlines, maintenance shops and pilots operate under. These all contribute to an outstanding safety record. It is foolish to assume that the same kinds of benefits can be reaped from self-driving cars without some of the associated cost - do you currently trust your local car mechanic to be as quality-conscious as the aircraft guy? And would you pay as much for car maintenance as for aircraft maintenance?

Cars increasingly have features to monitor their own maintenance. Engine and emissions diagnostics were mandated decades ago. Tire-pressure monitoring is, too. Pretty much every new car tracks its own oil changes by counting miles and engine revs, as well. With some creative programming, the wheel-spin sensors from the ABS/TCS could be used to monitor track tire wear and grip.

Tie all of these sensors together, and the car can probably know enough about its condition to determine whether it can drive itself safely. If it is, literally or figuratively, not operating on all cylinders, the auto-drive system would not engage. The subset of the population who would rather drive on bald tires with the check-engine light on would have to drive themselves.

Electric motors also make lots of torque near instantly, so you don't need complex mechanical transmissions that bring parasitic losses with them.

But if you look inside the Volt, you'll see a (simplified) transmission in there: running electric motors at higher speed lowers efficiency, so the gears shift to bring the electric RPM back down. And that brings them back to higher torque/HP output ranges as well.

Re self-driving cars, as someone who lives in the Northeast, Google's claims that their cars are safe because they've driven hundreds of thousands of miles don't soothe me at all... because they're all logged, AFAIK, in sunny Nevada. When they have a car that can dodge someone erratically sliding down the street in winter sleet, and understands "it's wicked slippery out here" before it loses control of the metal, then I'll be somewhat more accepting of the technology. (Somehow, even lane-departure warnings and "automatically brakes to help you avoid accidents" etc. never seem to have any claims about their efficacy in wintry conditions either. You'd think the manufacturers don't even know it can snow.)

I have hope that the self-driving car rollout will go slowly and carefully, though. After the Toyota acceleration chaos, I suspect proponents understand that as soon as an event happens where it "looks like" the machine could have made a mistake, self-driving cars will be set back 5-30 years in the court of public opinion by the ensuing media blitz. So they'll be certain that they have a truly capable system before unleashing it on the public roads.

There are some theoretical advantages to a series hybrid. As discussed in part one, traditional car engines need to operate under a range of conditions. This involves design compromises like making less power higher up the rev range in order to get acceptable performance at lower revs. But if that engine's job is just to run a generator, then it can be designed without these trade-offs and run closer to its peak efficiency.

no, not in and of itself. Mechanically decoupling the engine from the wheels doesn't change the fact that the engine still sees variable load based on the power demands of the electric motor (s.) It does become easier to optimize the engine's operation when its RPM is not dictated by road speed, though.

Now, if you have a (substantial) battery on board, then it becomes easier- run the engine at close to rated power to recharge the battery, then turn the thing off.

I have enjoyed this and the other recent automotive tech articles. Given the prevalence of patent related articles on Ars, I would welcome a future article addressing the intellectual property issues of the automotive industry and if possible a comparison to the IP issues in the software industry. As this article points out, computers and software are important part of innovation in the auto industry. But unlike the software industry, the automotive industry does not have a strong dislike for patents. I suspect this has something to do with history given that the auto industry grew up from the start with patents. Its no coincidence that the Detroit area is overrepresented with patent attorneys and that the USPTO picked Detroit for the first satellite office.

With respect to patents, I wonder whether the pro-patent auto industry mindset or the anti-patent software industry mindset will win. Will the software industry reach a point where patents are just a normal part of the innovation process as they are in the auto industry? Or will the ever increasing importance of software in cars cause the same problems with software patents that seem to be affecting the software industry right now.

"My car is smarter than me—and I get better gas mileage for itWant top fuel efficiency? Cars will drive themselves, engines will adjust to traffic."

Well, the second half of the second page did talk about this. Perhaps mentioning weight in the header would have prepped me for what I was about to read. By the time I was done reading the carbon fiber section I was wondering if I was reading the wrong article in the series.

Back at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) created the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid. It used batteries and a Daimler engine to power electric motors mounted in each wheel hub

Fun fact: this drive was actually put into use for tanks during WWII. The "Elefant" heavy tank destroyer built by Porche for the Nazi army used two engines to drive a generator that powered electrical motors placed in the track's power wheels. This was an attempt to work around a typical problem in tanks at the time: unreliable and hard gear boxes and transmission (and when I mean hard, I mean some Russian tankers where issued hammers to be able to shift the gears of their tanks).

Another fun fact: this is basically how almost all modern freight diesel locomotives work.

«There are some theoretical advantages to a series hybrid. As discussed in part one, traditional car engines need to operate under a range of conditions. This involves design compromises like making less power higher up the rev range in order to get acceptable performance at lower revs. But if that engine's job is just to run a generator, then it can be designed without these trade-offs and run closer to its peak efficiency. Electric motors also make lots of torque near instantly, so you don't need complex mechanical transmissions that bring parasitic losses with them.»

You're forgetting it's main disadvantage of pure serial hybrids.Since all the power from the engine runs through the electric generator and motor, they have to be bigger, more expensive. And they have higher losses than a typical mechanical transmission.

And unlike the original Honda Insight, which was a true parallel hybrid, most (all?) modern hybrids use a complex scheme which kind of gets the best of both worlds.

The drive train acts as a infinitely variable transmission for the combustion engine, allowing it to be designed for optimal speed operation like in a serial hybrid, but only part of the combustion engine's power goes through the electric generator and motor. Most of the combustion engine's power goes mechanically to the wheels, reducing the size and cost of the electric motor/generators and reducing losses.

Another fun fact: this is basically how almost all modern freight diesel locomotives work.

And a lot of heavy duty vehicles, like buldozzers, giant dump trucks, cranes, etc, also use electric transmissions.It's not the most efficient transmission scheme in the world, but's it's the most robust.

Trivia: a German company called Voith specialized in hydraulic transmissions as an alternative to electric transmissions.

Self-driving cars are pointless. Why even have a car if you're not going to drive it? Why not just improve public transit? It would be more efficient and there is no practical difference if you're not driving the car.

A car is a tool, not an entertainment device.

The fact that they're often marketed and driven on public roads as entertainment devices is one of American society's bigger problems.

The advantages of having a personal transit device as opposed to public transit are mostly in the scheduling, routing, and duration aspects.

Sure you can take the bus all around town, but you might have to take several times as much time and go quite a distance out of your way.

I look forward to the day when I can ride a bicycle on a public road and computer controlled cars share the lanes with me safely.

So one of the most important aspects of self-driving car algorithms is to provide a gradual, coordinated (with other traffic, and with the driver) handover back to the human if the automatics determine they have to let go. That is going to be hard, and require multiply-fault-tolerant links and components all the way. Such tend to be very expensive.

This came up in the other thread as well, but it is comparing the wrong things. Even if the handover would end badly, the advantages in automatic driving would probably significantly reduce the chances of a fatal accident, not just for you, but also the other drivers that need to react to your car having problems. Comparing this to flying sounds reasonable, but a car is much easier to fail 'gracefully', thus reducing the number of possible hazardous situations to a very small amount when you have got the basics down.We just tend to accept less fault due to technical errors, even if it is safer than the alternative.

Comparing this to flying sounds reasonable, but a car is much easier to fail 'gracefully', thus reducing the number of possible hazardous situations to a very small amount when you have got the basics down.We just tend to accept less fault due to technical errors, even if it is safer than the alternative.

With all due respect, I disagree. When an aircraft autopilot disconnects, that's a local phenomenon, between the pilot and the aircraft. Other aircraft still have a separation within human response times.

If you look at the more far-out self-drive situations, where cars intersect at full speed, or even the close-trailing scenario, a disconnect is bound to affect a number of close-by cars, almost instantly. As long as the disconnect is properly communicated, those other cars can take action. If not, then they have to fall back to the "unexpected object in path" protection - the same thing that protects against children chasing their balls.

The whole thing becomes much more of a system-of-systems than the aircraft example, thus more complex and harder to analyze. Interesting times are no doubt ahead - just think of the kinds of oscillations we might get from unexpected resonances between car reaction times...

Self-driving cars are pointless. Why even have a car if you're not going to drive it? Why not just improve public transit? It would be more efficient and there is no practical difference if you're not driving the car.

A car is a tool, not an entertainment device.

Entertainment is in the eyes of the beholder. I'm sorry you take no joy in driving. I, however, often love it, especially when I can find a nice curvy hillside road. Obviously my car's mileage would drop in those periods of time. But since I've never lived more than 7 minutes from my work (and work from home now) I felt my gas budget could afford it.

Most forms of entertainment are a "waste" of resources by someone else's definition (prime time TV comes to my mind). However, it's up to each consumer to decide what's worth "wasting" resources on. Clearly for you it's not driving a car.

Comparing this to flying sounds reasonable, but a car is much easier to fail 'gracefully', thus reducing the number of possible hazardous situations to a very small amount when you have got the basics down.We just tend to accept less fault due to technical errors, even if it is safer than the alternative.

With all due respect, I disagree. When an aircraft autopilot disconnects, that's a local phenomenon, between the pilot and the aircraft. Other aircraft still have a separation within human response times.

If you look at the more far-out self-drive situations, where cars intersect at full speed, or even the close-trailing scenario, a disconnect is bound to affect a number of close-by cars, almost instantly. As long as the disconnect is properly communicated, those other cars can take action. If not, then they have to fall back to the "unexpected object in path" protection - the same thing that protects against children chasing their balls.

The whole thing becomes much more of a system-of-systems than the aircraft example, thus more complex and harder to analyze. Interesting times are no doubt ahead - just think of the kinds of oscillations we might get from unexpected resonances between car reaction times...

I have wondered about the emergent behaviors we'll see. However, I wonder if this won't be mitigated by leaving the ultimate authority up to the roads or even the individual intersections. Yes, the cars will communicate with one another but in the end the intersection up ahead and scheduling everything as efficiently as it can.

Entertainment is in the eyes of the beholder. I'm sorry you take no joy in driving. I, however, often love it, especially when I can find a nice curvy hillside road. Obviously my car's mileage would drop in those periods of time. But since I've never lived more than 7 minutes from my work (and work from home now) I felt my gas budget could afford it.

Most forms of entertainment are a "waste" of resources by someone else's definition (prime time TV comes to my mind). However, it's up to each consumer to decide what's worth "wasting" resources on. Clearly for you it's not driving a car.

Driving can be a heck of a lot of fun. That's why there are tracks and road courses, to say nothing of off-road courses, where people can take their vehicles and push the limits of their equipment and skill in a safe and appropriate environment, in the company of others who appreciate the same forms of entertainment.

At least once a month, because I love to drive. I live in a city, but I get out of it for weekend road trips because I love driving my car. That's kind of the point actually - I don't want to rent one, every time I get the urge to take a weekend drive.

I would love to see self-driving cars. I suspect they'll be mandatory in some areas within a surprisingly short time (20 years or so) without special permits; large cities, for instance. I would love to be able to not have to monitor the road for a whole five hours while driving to visit my family. That said, I don't think they're be entirely automated; selective self/manual driving, automated cutovers, and probably overrides (e.g. for emergency vehicles they have a transmitter that causes traffic to stop and pull over).

I would be unsurprised to see automated public transportation in place of cabs (much to the annoyance of cabbies). Fly into an airport, see a bunch of specially-designed self-driving cars. Load your bags, tell it to take you to your hotel, dope off for the trip. Basically the same to get around town, or head back to the airport.

During the interim period, we'll probably start seeing self-driving only lanes, kind of like HOV lanes.

Oh man, yes! I can't wait for automated cars! I enjoy cars and driving, but I'd much rather have my normal commuting needs handled by a computer while I read a magazine. I'll get my driving fix on the weekends at the track

But stuffing cars inhumanly close together is one of the key points of auto driving... since it will provide higher utilization of roads, lower fuel consumption, etc. Not that it's a necessary consequence of auto mode, but proponents do push it as a good reason for it.

I already drive inhumanly close to the guy in front of me! ++ Environment points for me!

'While I'm the first person to point out there's actually very little technology transfer from F1 to road cars, in this instance there's a case to be made. For one thing, F1 gives a halo effect to regenerative braking.'

This was not always the case.

Back in the 1980's I worked on F1 tech. The company I contracted to developed F1 technology and included such things as active suspension, paddle shift gearboxes, electronically controlled differentials, engine management systems, traction control, launch control and many other pieces of electronic trickery.

We pretty much started with a blank sheet of paper, at that time fuel injection and electronic ignition were pretty much the state of the art. Multidimensional, table-based ignition maps overlaying complex fuel injection strategies, then later boost control mapping and incredibly precise fuel monitoring and delivery to enable the cars to be fueled as little as possible (weight) and make as much power as possible within the rules.

The major gains came as we started to tie these systems together, detecting wheel slippage (and steering wheel angle) and controlling the differential, fuel supply (at a cylinder level) and the ignition mapping advanced rudimentary traction control, which was based on simply retarding ignition previously, the result was that the driver could simply nail the throttle and the car would accelerate at its maximim grip-related level.

Mixing in electronic brake distribution tech allowed braking distances to shorten, suspension that detected that the car was heading into a corner and leaning slightly into the bend and was reactive to changes in grip (slip) increased cornering speeds.

Nearly all of this was science fiction at the end of the 1970's.

Near all of it exist on my road car today..

As for cars that drive themselves ?

I am all for it, on the odd days that I need to go to my LA office, the last thing I want to do is to spend 2hrs fighting with the traffic on the 405 freeway. Being able to get into my car and select 'home' from a menu of destinations and sit back and snooze and/or answer my e-mail, talk to clients or simply play space invaders all the way home would be fantastic....

Obviously a track day in an autonomous car would be a tad dull. Unless you could assign it personalities - 'Oh yeah I downloaded Lewis Hamilton for my track day, not as much fun as the James Hunt I downloaded last weekend though....

Consider a car that's in auto mode, trailing the car in front by a few meters at 100kp/h, with another car behind it. Here, we are in a mode that's well beyond human reactions to handle, in fact this state of affairs is one of the reasons for having the auto mode in the first place.Now something happens and auto mode disengages. If it does so suddenly, a quite ugly accident is very likely, since regardless of driver attention or engagement, the situation simply cannot be handled. The ensuing litigation will also be memorable.

No need to worry about that, actually. If the robo-cars are talking to each other, then the trailing car will know to back off and start treating you like a manually controlled car, because you are one. And if they aren't talking to each other, then all parties will likely have died in a fireball long before it gets to the point where a hand-off back to human control is necessary, because cooperation is what made the car caravan possible in the first place.

Manually operated cars will need to remain an option, for a long time. Just like the motorcycle and the manual transmission, niche products will endure. Emergency vehicles will also want to stay manual. Interacting with manual vehicles will be innate for any self-driving car, forever.

Inter-car cooperation is not near the top of the list of advantages of self-driving cars. It is dwarfed by advantages like health (stress), safety (road-rage, speeding and other moral hazards, fatigue), and convenience (texting (and other moral hazards such as drunk driving), unmanned parking, unmanned refueling, and unmanned pizza retrieval). Fear not, fuel economy will remain just as underserved a concern as it is today. But the carbon footprint of the ER and insurance markets will drop dramatically.

The future is a 1000 lbs car with 4 seats, a 30hp engine for a top speed of 65mph and doing 150mpg.

Oil is over in 10-20 years (or available is such limited supply that is too expensive).

Well I learnt to drive in a Mk1 mini. 4 seats yes 30 bhp...it had 34 bhp from 948 cc 65 mph ... it could achieve 75 mph on a good day. weight under 2000 lbs. mpg about 40 to the US gallon

That was 1959. Today's example would be the VW Lupo which can consistently manage 70 mpg and that car is an 9 year old design now IIRC but unlike the min has modern safety in the bodyshell, airbags etc.

The technology makes no difference to me, but I'd rather be in control of my own destiny than the programmer of the computer for the car and the guidance system.

I absolutely understand that and think that myself, despite knowing that it might be the worse option.

But to be honest, and without knowing you or your driving, I'd much rather have your car controlled by a computer, because by experience all the other people on the street can't drive

Seriously, that's one of the problems I see with the acceptance of self driving cars. If not for the US, then at least for Germany. Drivers almost universally overestimate their abilities. You could have the streets a lot safer with automated cars, because the common causes for accidents and jams, not paying attention or overreacting, would be gone. The risk coming from failure of the automated systems I expect to be orders of magnitude smaller.Airplanes and trains are much safer than driving today, but still many people are more worried about their safety when boarding a plane or riding a train. Because they are not in control. So your argument will be heard quite often, as people have no problem putting their life at risk as long as they have the feeling of being able to control it.

If one of the Google cars has just a minor accident caused by the controlling computer, there will be an outcry, even if it happens after ten times the miles driven where an above average driver would be expected to have an accident.

It's maybe worth noting that risk perception is crap in general. People are afraid of sharks, but not of swimming. Now compare how many people get killed by sharks and how many drown because they swam out too far and ignored current or just had cramps because they went swimming right after stuffing their bellies...

Personally I hate driving on the road with other idiots who are focusing on everything but the road and cars around them but I enjoy the act of driving. My hope is that self-driving cars will take over the roadways but it will cause a resurgence in race tracks that allow you to race your own cars. Use that EV-1Xc self driving car for getting groceries and such but take your old 2010 BWM out to the track for some fun (assuming self-driving cars are 15+ years out). I bet you would even see car storage places be built next to the tracks to store people's fun cars. Of course you would need some sort of "race license".

Lets face it you never get to drive in really fun ways on normal roads without having to worry about getting a ticket so why not let the people who like driving do it in a safe place where they can go fast? Put all the people who shouldn't even be allowed to drive in self driving cars that will let them put on their make-up while talking on their cell phone and eating breakfast without causing danger to others.

Entertainment is in the eyes of the beholder. I'm sorry you take no joy in driving. I, however, often love it, especially when I can find a nice curvy hillside road. Obviously my car's mileage would drop in those periods of time. But since I've never lived more than 7 minutes from my work (and work from home now) I felt my gas budget could afford it.

I love driving. Driving is great fun. But sitting in a traffic jam every single friggin' day is not driving - it's commuting, and for the most part it's a right ball-ache. For one contract I had to endure sitting in a car for a total of 3 hours a day, mostly in traffic. It sucked ass. Public transport would have taken longer.

I'd like to do both. Have an auto-car for the really boring drives that you have to do (commuting, shopping, etc.) would be great if I could also have a sports car for the track on weekends.

I find it interesting that comments have gone straight to self-driving cars (and aircraft autopilot). The article I read was about semi-autonomous cars, not fully-automatic self-driving cars. I know that Google and others have their robo-cars logging miles already, but be realistic: the future will be won by incremental changes within buyer comfort zones, not wholesale usurping of the driver's seat.

Without even talking about efficiency, technology is available today in conventionally-fueled, conventionally-operated cars that enhance performance, convenience, and safety, and the driver is in no danger of becoming obsolete. Things like adaptive cruise control, parking assistance, traction and stability control, all-wheel drive systems, and adaptive navigation — all with the computer making decisions for you that you may not even know about, but all in support of your driving intentions. Even automatic high-beams, rain-sense wipers, and keyless security and ignition, systems that can evaluate conditions and make appropriate decisions without taking your mind off your driving. This sort of thing is common in modern vehicles, yet none of it has eliminated the role of an alert and skilled driver. Arguably, by not having to fiddle with these things, the driver's attention is more available for the task at hand: driving.

I, for one, love it. I love the idea of a semi-autonomous car, just as I love it when my computer or smartphone rightly anticipates my intentions and lays out what I want just as it occurs to me that I want it. I feel compelled to /thank/ my car when it helps me out, whether it's wiping away a thin mist I hadn't noticed, or adjusting power to my wheels to help me make a more, erm, spirited maneuver with power and accuracy.

If the car is engineered to be helpful and ready, and if I remain the executive in the relationship, then I'm more likely to enjoy my driving experience, and I'm fine with that. I can understand feeling better about your driving skills if you can do all this yourself all the time, but, again — realistically, you're not in a track mentality full-time when you're zooming around town on your daily routine. You're no less a competent driver to have a machine extend your awareness.

Gadgets are fun, smart gadgets are fun, cars are fun, smart cars are fun. I don't see the problem.